Friday, January 20, 2006

2006 Great Divide Tours - Victorian High Country Trek

Sunday - 8 January 2006 Day 1.

We started bright and early on Sunday morning with Wayne, our trip leader, outlining the trip and headed off from Bright to Lake Cobbler, where we had morning tea, on the Mt Buffalo power line trail.

The sky was blue, the scenery was magnificent, the bush flowers were plentiful and varied and the day was beautiful.

We drove in convoy procedure and slowly got used to each other.

We stopped at Lake Cobbler for lunch and viewed our first cattleman’s hut.

Our first major challenge was to drive down “The Staircase”. Every vehicle was carefully guided down “The Staircase” by our trip leader Wayne as correct wheel placement was most important to avoid damage. This was a most exciting start to what Wayne promised would be a week of increasing challenges, from a driving point of view, with fantastic sights and scenes getting better every day.

We headed for King River where we set up base camp for the following two nights. It had been a really hot day and so cooling off in the river sounded like a really great idea even though the water was REALLY cold.

At least we could get rid of the dust of the day.

The camp fire was fantastic, a BBQ dinner and getting to know everyone a little better was a perfect end to a full day.

We slept well and were ready for an early start on Monday.